


The Body Melts Away

by The Acrobat (the_acrobat)



Category: Stargate: SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-17
Updated: 2006-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-04 23:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_acrobat/pseuds/The%20Acrobat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the desert planet at nightfall, they're climbing a hill when he spots her. She is as she once was, all smooth lines like ripples in the sand, a sculpture of perfect beauty carved from a dry landscape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Body Melts Away

On the desert planet at nightfall, they're climbing a hill when he spots her. She is as she once was, all smooth lines like ripples in the sand, a sculpture of perfect beauty carved from a dry landscape. In the space of a single breath, he's running, running up the hill toward her and nothing - not Jack's shouted warning, not the knot of exhaustion from a week's travel by foot, not the fist of heat that beats down upon them as the light from this planet's star disappears below the horizon and is absorbed into a bank of rolling clouds - can hold him back.

Her back is to him, and the sand blows in gentle eddies around her feet, dusting the soft skin of her ankles where he used to kiss her and make her shiver and giggle with pleasure in the heat of another desert, tracing his love in wet glyphs on her skin. Silently, he slips behind her and places a hand on her waist, slides his arm around her, barely touching her, embraces her and is startled by the firmness of her flesh. Her skin is like glass warmed by the sun, smooth, sanded, soft as air.

She smells as she always did, like sand, like the sun, like salty sweat. He wants to look at her but his eyes are wet; his tears break the stars in the sky into crystals, melt her into a blur of sand-brown skin and sky-black hair. She is horizon and landscape, Abydos, pooled in his arms.

His tears trickle down his cheeks like first drops of rain as he kisses her neck, her cheeks, her lips. Hot tears of relief roll down her shoulders. "Sha're, Sha're" he whispers so only she can hear, but she is still and does not reply.

He can taste his tears on his tongue, a salty deluge now, and her skin, salty with sweat. He kisses her lips and tastes salt, salt, and when her lips don't yield to kiss him with the warm, damp passion he remembers, when she doesn't respond to his touch, he feels like those shattered stars, like there's something crackling in his chest, a rumbling, thunderous ache.

And thunder rumbles again, and the sky opens. As he kisses her, as his hot tears strike her skin, her body begins to melt away. Up close, when he dries his eyes on his sleeve, opens them, he sees that she is all beauty, all crystal glittering in the starlight, a statue of salt melting under his tears. The rain joins Daniel's tears, running salty-hot down his face, rattling as it hits the sand, splashing mud onto his ankles and in his arms, she melts away.

"Sha're!" he croaks, hoarse, somewhere deep down, somewhere inside him that is crystalline, crumbling.

He falls to his knees in the sand; he falls to his knees in the mud, grabbing handfuls of salty sand and bringing them to his lips, kissing the sand, the salt, the mud and the water. His face is as dark as a shadow, distorted with agony and loss. He feels as though he, too, is dissolving in the rain.

Then there are firm, solid hands on his shoulders, flesh-hands, and Jack says, "Let's go, Daniel. She's gone. Let's go," and those hands, Jack's hands, Teal'c's hands, Sam's hands are lifting him to his feet and he is reaching for the sand. And all those strong, wet hands on his flesh, those warm hands, those arms around him are barely enough, but they hold him together.

Daniel wakes up alone and too warm in a too-wide bed as vast as the desert. His mouth is parched and tastes funny, salty, like he has been too long in the sun without water. He licks his lips, tastes salt on his tongue, rubs his cheeks and feels the rough residue of dried tears. In the shadow of his dream, Daniel feels light, empty, and alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to dear, wonderful [](http://loneraven.livejournal.com/profile)[**loneraven**](http://loneraven.livejournal.com/) for the beta.


End file.
